My loves,
I write this with so much love and compassion in my heart. I feel like this post will be controversial in many ways, but a lot of it needs to be said. From my own personal experience and readings and watching the way society is going, we are lost.
Being lost isn’t a bad thing, though. This part of the journey shows us the power of intention. We either make an intention to find answers, in which we find ourselves through the deepest and most magical secrets of life, or we choose to wander with no aim and stay in purgatory.
I feel like there’s a huge misunderstanding of what it means to be feminine. We have the “rise of the divine feminine” on social media while feminist discourse from a monolithic white and middle-class interpretation takes heed. Too often, we see young people — and grown adults — get into debates on women “surrendering” and “submitting” to men and what it means. These debates balance other, more dominant, discussions on gender roles sift through championing gender neutrality under the pretext of all humans being the same.
Along with the discussion is a layer of people saying it excludes LGBTQ+ community. Do they fit in the masculine-feminine discussion? My opinion is every human has a place in this discussion and can apply it in any way they wish, but if they want to stay out of it or if they don’t believe in masculine and feminine energy, this is a belief that must be respected and is not up for debate. For the purpose of simplicity, I will use heterosexual examples in this post, but take the principles as they resonate with you.
The same way there is darkness and light and throughout the day we experience life based on the spectrum in which we see darkness or light, every human sits on the spectrum of masculine and feminine and expresses their identity based on where they are in their lives. This is not to say that you change your sex or gender identity, but it means you harness masculine and feminine energy at different points of your life or during the day.
To put it more simply, I, as a feminine woman, go a lot deeper in my masculine energy when I’m at work to help me focus and get a job done, but the moment I get to switch off, I quickly go back to a predominantly feminine state. When I don’t feel safe with someone, I stop trusting that and I will begin to operate from a more masculine space to help me fend for myself. After all, there is a drop of yin inside the yang and a drop of yang inside the yin.
When we look at traditional archetypes of masculinity and femininity, the feminine carries an energy of surrender to the masculine. In relationships, women who don’t surrender to men are often seen as being in their masculine energy. The problem with this is that we are viewing relationships as notions to rationalise instead of windows of self-discovery.
Every single religious and spiritual path focus on surrendering to the Divine, regardless of gender. Relating this to my path, the word Islam comes from two root words in Arabic: استسلام, (pronounced as istislam and means surrender) and سلام (pronounced as salam and means peace).
We have one God who has 99 names and they are divided into the jalal (masculine/majestic) and jamal (feminine/beautiful). When you bring those two qualities, you get the kamal, which is Arabic for complete.
While surrender is a feminine trait, surrendering to Allah is a quality bestowed upon all Muslims. Therefore, our expression of masculinity and femininity isn’t as binary as these Twitter debates on surrendering to your boyfriend set them out to be.
Surrender through femininity
To surrender means to give up your ego to let the Divine take care of your blessings — after all, they aren’t ours to bestow upon ourselves. Even if we apply the most fundamental views of the Law of Attraction and Law of Assumption, we attract and assume to allow ourselves to receive from God.
Have you tried to manifest and found it hard to let go? That’s because your body doesn’t allow you to do so. Your nervous system is wired in fight or flight and can’t enter its flow state to receive because the fears of the “what ifs” linger for way too long. This directly links to feminine energy because if our nervous system is too wired up to surrender, we’re not going to feel safe — whether it’s surrendering to God’s will or the protection of a man.
For us to enter the state of surrender that allows us to receive our manifestations, and to create harmony in our relationships by giving the masculine the trust and respect their love language naturally yearns for, you need to start with your body. There’s no point in convincing your mind to “let go” if your body quite literally can’t do it.
Having a breathwork routine, visiting your inner child regularly to understand your triggers from the source of your childhood (my reiki master Chetna Halai recommended that I do this every day) and taking salt baths all help to regulate your nervous system. The most important thing to is to understand how your body reacts and why it reacts to situations in the way it does.
We live in a society that places the responsibility on others to not “trigger” us rather than being responsible for understanding and managing our own natural responses to things. Of course, we should be sensitive to the feelings of others, but that doesn’t mean we go into an extreme of refusing to be accountable for our own healing journey.
Feeling anxiety is actually a positive thing if you approach it with curiosity. When you feel yourself spiralling, take a deep breath and ask yourself where in your body you feel this anxiety, or anger, or fear or whatever other emotions. Once you locate it in your body, you’re at an advantage because you’re able to breathe into it directly and then ask more questions about why you’re in the state that you’re in. You have something to focus on rather than this abstract anxiety that you feel in one part of your body which has the potential to take over every cell if you allow it to spiral.
A good book is Moving Beyond Trauma by Ilene Smith, which teaches using somatic experiencing to heal the nervous system from trauma. Dr Joe Dispenza’s Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself looks at neuroplasticity, epigenetics, quantum healing and CBT techniques to drum in new belief systems. The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle was a frustrating read about being in the present moment, but only because it’s true. If you prefer to be eased into relaxing your affairs to the Divine, I’d recommend reading Outrageous Opening by Tosha Silver before reading The Power of Now because it uses real-life examples and it’s easier to read.
When it comes to dealing with others, surrendering is and should only possible with trust. After trusting the Divine, the first person you should trust is yourself. You must be grounded in your boundaries, in knowing what you expect in a relationship and how to communicate it. You must also trust yourself to be able to communicate your feelings and that you know when to exit a relationship when it becomes toxic before it’s too late.
For your own safety, I would recommend working on your self-worth because whether you want to enter your feminine energy or not, without valuing yourself, you’ll end up in dangerous situations with others because you don’t know how to say no. The only thing that’s worse than not being able to say no is not believing you deserve to say no.
When it comes to enforcing your boundaries, the best thing to do is to come from a feeling place. “This made me feel sad/angry/upset” and you follow up with a request for them to not do it again. If they do it again, or if they did something strong, follow up with a consequence. When you talk about how something made you feel, the other person would soften up because you’ll be entering your heart rather than your head.
If you lead with your head, you become like a bull and the other person would want to headbutt you back (fellow Taurus gang say wag1!!!). Speaking from your heart helps to disarm both of you and create a form of vulnerability that is efficient, firm and genuine.
When you trust that you can allow someone to lead you, the dominant energy in your life would be one of receiving. Sure you’ll have to work for things, but you’ll be more receptive to allowing things to naturally come to you. You won’t feel the need to prove your worth because you’ve worked on your self-worth so much that you’ll naturally ooze it. You will automatically build boundaries instead of walls because you’ll be in tune with your intuition which allows you to be vulnerable enough for a healthy relationship, without it being detrimental to you. At any point, walls are detrimental and leave you in a vulnerable position because they stem from insecurity.
Whether you want to surrender or not, if you don’t have these basic skills, people will feel your weakness and unfortunately, horrible people will try to walk all over you when they learn your emotional patterns for the purpose of manipulating you. These are basic ways to protect yourself no matter your role in relationships, or even relationship status itself. Emotional intelligence makes you less vulnerable to manipulation.
The person you’ll allow to lead will naturally want to make you happy and use your heart and desires as a roadmap to your shared destination. As women, we don’t understand why men desire to be respected and trusted so much, but it’s their innate love desire the way being cherished and taken care of is ours. Working with this is a win-win because you can relax and get what you want while making your significant other very happy.
On a more rational level, giving someone you care about the respect that they want doesn’t diminish your self-respect, listening attentively doesn’t diminish your voice and allowing someone to lead doesn’t mean you’re a sheep.
People think surrender is for the weak, but to do it successfully, you need a strong sense of self and the ability to softly set solid boundaries.
You need to be able to say no and you will need to be able to express your feelings, which is such a rare thing to do. We’re so used to rationalising that we feel embarrassed to express the heart out of fear of being squashed and rejected from the most vulnerable place within us.
This shiii ain’t for the weak and it really only should be done by those who know and trust themselves, so start the journey of surrender by surrendering to yourself and God. To surrender is not to be a lost puppy, it’s to be an unassuming lioness who chooses the path of calmly playing the long-game, knowing she can pounce at any moment if need be.
I love you all so much,
Di xox
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